#asksilvy

Don't mind if I do! 😃

This would be their dynamic in Happy Scrappy-verse specifically, of course.

After the events of 6.3, the defeated Dottore is brought on board to help out with the "Repairing Sandrone" project with Aino as the de facto boss, which he has some good reasons to grudgingly agree to.

But of course, no matter how skilled and capable she is, the other heroes don't intend to leave Aino alone with That Guy, so they take turns on guard duty to babysit the whole situation.

For Flins, that works out pretty well since it means no paperwork there's a Wild Hunt spawn point just off the scrapyard he can keep an eye on at the same time.

It also works out since he's a rather bored and mainstream-conforming "human" these days, exceptionally polite to all those deserving. Dottore, he feels, is not deserving. 🙂

He is in fact fair game to unleash all that pent-up fae trickster instinct upon, like a magpie finding it hilarious to nip at a fox's tail - there are just so many buttons to push, and it's always great fun to get to see Dottore's rather overbearing and in-control demeanour slip!

Humans are such interesting creatures after all. Especially if you can make them squeak a bit. 😌

Dottore, meanwhile, is not at all pleased with the 180 from being a God setting out to finally Fix The World, to ending up doing unthankful work in a little Nod-Krai junkyard. It's not as bad as it could be, granted, but he hates feeling constrained, and diminished, and told what to do.

And then Pantalone drops by to inform him that at least for the time being, the Fatui have cut him (this specific segment, they've got spares) loose. Heavily implied this also goes for Pantalone himself, personally (he also has access to said spares. He likes this particular segment, he's fun! But also frankly the biggest asshole among them. It's Not Over, We Just Need A Bit Of A Break. To spend with nicer versions of you.)

So that leaves an even more frustrated Dottore who is now also freshly dumped and about ready to start gnawing his limbs off if he doesn't get some enrichment in his enclosure.

Flins will just have to do.

Flins turns out to be an utter bastard about this, insisting on things like "perhaps you could try asking nicely", and then just smiling that stupid smug little enigmatic fae smile of his the more annoyed you get.

Their relationship is very utilitarian, a mutual scratching of various itches. At least for the time being not romantic at all.

In modern terms, I hc Dottore as aro-allo, zero interest in conventional romance but considering sex a simple physical requirement that needs satisfying occasionally, like eating, sleeping or a good sneeze when your nose itches. There used to be a Pantalone and various other segments around for that, but stuck in the scrapyard, there's a notable lack of those.

Flins I hc as sex-neutral aro-ace in this story. Being a literal aarnivalkea flame with a rather loose connection to his physical form in the first place, he has little interest in sex for its own sake (though the occasional orgasm is pretty nice) but he does find the intricacies of human intimacy interesting and entertaining. You poke at them and they make funny noises! Definitely more fun than paperwork!

Navigating the whole arrangement is a beautiful transactional "with negotiations we all got what we wanted/what stops you from negotiating with me to get what you want" unstoppable force Dottore vs "you're bargaining with a fae" immovable object Flins fireworks show. When to push, when to yield, when to compromise and on what... the raging battle of wills is half the foreplay at this point.

("The trick is to get him really worked up," says Flins serenely, "and then grab and twist his harness and pinch him a bit, in strategic locations. He unravels beautifully after that.")

Honestly, half of what they get up to would barely constitute as conventional sex at all. It works out, somehow.

At the start of the story, Dottore's also lost his mask, laying bare the forehead implant beneath. And Flins (actual magpie) does love his interesting gemstones. He finds the sensory processor gem absolutely intriguing. It's a beautiful journey of mutual self-discovery to find out just how sensitive it is to touch. 🥰

(And for all that Dottore usually comes in at a bit of a disadvantage on account of wanting those itches scratched more than Flins does, there is at least one glorious occasion when he smacks a fun little device he made onto Flins' lantern, binding him in his physical body and then spending all night enacting horrible revenge for all the times Flins edged him for hours. A journey of mutual self-discovery, indeed. 😃)

That's the general gist of it! There are many more layers of headcanons there, but that's for some other time.

I do very much like their aspect of this story! But ship art, especially weird art for rare ships, gets very few notes on rednote, and that's currently pretty much the only social media where people actually comment on my things these days, so the flinstore ends up a bit on the back-burner.

Dottore is very clearly incredibly strong regardless of being built like a twink. (Yes, I am a claymore Dottie truther XD) so imagine one day, Ineffa isn't there to help move some heavy equipment because she's shopping or something, and Aino needs to move something somewhere. So he just, hoists it up over his shoulder with one arm and asks where it needs to go.

Hahaha, that's beautiful! 😂

I had a bit of trouble envisioning Dottore as the Claymore wielder he's apparently coded as - in his boss battles, he's all Catalyst and ranged projectiles! - until I rewatched the time he decided to throw hands with Traveler.

Because that 👆 is absolutely a Claymore stance, yeah. 😂

(On a side note, I absolutely prefer his twink Omega build to the increasingly beefy and disproportionate boss forms, Hoyo, blease... 😭)

As for Scrapyardverse, exactly how strong he actually is is a bit up in the air as of yet. Absolutely far stronger than an ordinary human! But also not so strong that he can't get his ass thoroughly kicked at times. (It's a Balance™).

I don't think he's quite on Ineffa-levels of "categorizing and stacking half-ton sheet metal like sorting mail" strong. But unthinkingly hoisting up some reasonably heavy eqipment and moving it to where it needs to go? Yeah, he could absolutely do that. 💚

BUT imagine in Scrapyard Au they lose track of Dottore at one point and all go looking to finally find him...still in the scrapyard just hidden behind some boxes or some other with like three cats laying on him asleep (Also see: dottore dead asleep for once) Bonus points if the cats are the type who absolutely despise everyone and never lets anyone get close.

Ineffa suggests a therapy cat for [The Cube] thoughts. Like fine if he doesnt want me suggesting deep breathing I'll just shove a cat in his arms that'll calm him down.

Sorry for yap fest through anon (bc I am horrible and socially awkward) but love your Au <3 (and yes more suffering for the angst :D)

I wholly respect your privacy, dear socially awkward anon, but I promise I'm actually extremely chill and friendly! No need to be shy - though anon is perfectly fine if that feels better. I'm hugging you gently with my brain. 🫂

And that is an ADORABLE mental image!

Here, have a snoozing Dottore covered in cats 💚

Sadly, my headcanon for actual Scrapyardverse is a little less sweet. In this au, he does not particularly like animals, and more importantly, animals don't like him.

With all his augmentations and modifications, he just reads like a really uncanny valley type of human to them, and animals instinctively react quite negatively to that. 😅

There is one future scene where Aino wants to take a picture with a cute animal, and the handler cheerfully assures them that the animals are very well trained and friendly - and yet the moment it's shoved in Dottore's arms, it instantly bites him and runs.

I described it to a friend like so:

”Won't the gentleman like to hold this adorable thing and have their picture taken?” "No," says Dottore. "Yes!! 🤩" says Aino, and so Dottore finds himself with an armful of dumped fluffy animal. ... It only takes about a second for it to bite him badly and claw its way loose to scamper off. The handler is shocked and keeps apologizing and Dottore just swears and goes "Disinfectant, please" to wash out his chewed finger. Aino is worried and the staff member keeps saying "I don't know why that happened, I'm so sorry, they never bite!" and Dottore hisses "Because with their acute senses, animals can tell I'm a monstrosity and abomination to nature. And so they, like most humans once they catch up, react accordingly."

(And then he and Aino have a loud argument about him calling her family member a monster and the not okayness of that.)

So yeah, sadly, no cat therapy in the Scrapyard. 🥲 Aino's experimental crab is okay, but it's on thin fucking ice. One pinch and it's OUT. (She hasn't wholly given up on the idea of getting a Fontainian robo-dog, but so far he's very firmly in camp NO.)

Thank you so much for your message! I'm SO happy you like this weird little au, truly!

Hahaha!! I am literally lore-flailing to out-of-town wife about the Temple in a chat as we speak!

We still haven't finished it, so now to avoid any potential spoilers until Sunday.

But I think my greatest fascination at this point is the connection to the philosophy behind Dottore's boss theme, and how that philosophy is closely tied to the Temple. Because especially in the library, it is VERY present!

To recap:

Dottore's boss theme is titled Prajnaparamitopadesa To Quell Seven Calamities. (Translation here)

This references a school of Buddhism called Mahayana, and specifically Prajnaparamita, the philosophical framework necessary to become a bodhisattva, an enlightened saviour who chooses not to ascend but voluntarily remains in the flawed world to help others attain enlightenment and escape suffering.

He does allude to this world-view and his frustration with the cycles of suffering a few times in his talk with Traveler;

Even his out of left field offer to Traveler to 'kill' innocent people and "tear off their heads, or limbs as you please!" actually references this philosophy;

The Prajñāpāramitā sutras give the simile of a magician (māyākāra: 'illusion-maker') who, when seemingly killing his illusory persons by cutting off their heads, really kills nobody and compare it to the bringing of beings to awakening (by 'cutting off' the conceptualization of self view

In our world, this school of philosophy was founded by a man named Nagarjuna. And there is a Nagarjuna in Genshin, whom I'm 90% sure is Dottore - they're from roughly the same era and the same nation.

His boss lyrics further echo this existing philosophy, the cornerstone of which is a type of "emptiness" - that all phenomena we perceive as real in truth have no "essence", and as such, could really hold the potential to be anything. That only by accepting and defeating the illusions of existence and non-existence, birth and death can you break free from suffering.

These are the opening lyrics to his boss theme, quoting that philosophy:

No cessation, no origination

No annihilation, no permanence

The same sentiment can be found in the description of his Madman's Restraint boss drop;

Yet believing that all things, whether they exist or not, can be contained within reason may itself be another form of lunacy. The madman sees through reason's cunning, and in his world, all things are permitted.

Now, in the Temple of Space, the great library is called the Mahavaipulya Chamber.

I am very much not an expert on Buddhism, all I know I've gathered from some quick googling, but Mahavaipulya is a sutra in that same Mahayana school of Buddhism, also attributed to our world's real Nagarjuna.

And the different people we meet in the library keep referencing this philosophy of existence and non-existence, the lack of inherent "essence" (or in Genshin terms, I suppose that would be pre-ordained Fate).

In the Temple also exists the Cage of Suchness. To quote another Buddhist passage;

They make up their minds that 'one single self we shall tame ... one single self we shall lead to final Nirvana.'

A Bodhisattva should certainly not in such a way train himself.

On the contrary, he should train himself thus: "My own self I will place in Suchness [the true way of things], and, so that all the world might be helped,

I will place all beings into Suchness, and I will lead to Nirvana the whole immeasurable world of beings."

So that whole Temple is, without doubt, connected to Dottore's world-philosophy which in turn is based on the real world Mahayana school of thought. It's literally what the lyrics of his boss theme are all about.

And bringing back the Nagarjuna connection with a second in-game reference in the Temple makes me even more certain of my assessment that they are either closely connected or the same person.

Genshin's Nagarjuna (who was a hero! He fought on the frontlines against the Cataclysm, was brothers in arms with Dain, allied with the Pari and helped seal the Abyss at the gates of Khaenri'ah) only has one arm. So at first glance, it would seem it's not a fit.

But. We never see young student Zandik's right arm in those carefully angled illustrations from Thoth's quest. And now not only one, but two of Dottore's subsequent boss forms have something weird going on with their right hands. One, a mechanical golden hand. The other, a half-transparent pixellated one with strange cube-growths.

My personal theory?

Young Zandik suffered from Eleazar and lost his arm to it. Just like with Abbas, whom he later treated at Dar al-Shifa, only amputation saved him.

That is what his musings in the Wise Doctor's Pinion artifact description could reference;

A human is nothing more than a machine of a certain level of complexity.

If one were to disassemble a part of this machine and make enhancements to it,

Its performance could be greatly amplified.

Taking on a very different meaning if he's talking about himself and the possibility of using prosthetics to regain the 'part of the machine' he'd lost.

In which case his horrid treatments of the patients at the Eleazar hospital were also not simply the clinical experiments of a detached researcher, but the ruthless fury of a fellow victim hellbent on finding a cure for the sickness that he himself was left maimed by.

There is one more place in the game where those lyrics from his boss theme above show up; on the monument of the Order of Skeptics (or Rectification Order, as they're called in original Chinese. The ones who want to set the world right) at Tunigi Hollow, outside the gates of Khaenri'ah.

A group of people disillusioned with the hypocrisy of the Akademiya, founding their own darshan of Heresy in the desert.

The same creed of frustration and disdain at the Akademiya preaching the seeking of knowledge while at the same time suppressing it, that's found in the description of one of his other boss drops.

The thing is, for all the horrible things Dottore's done, if you actually listen to what he's saying, not the snarky tone it's said in...

This is a man genuinely wanting to save the world.

He may not care much for people as individuals, but humanity as a whole... He strives to break their cycles of suffering.

He wants to set the world free.

The conclusion to his boss theme:

I alone shall liberate

For this is my world

Rejoice!

As a new world is born

Venerate!

That is a fascinating question that I have only very loosely poked at in my brain. I guess a lot of that depends on, you know, the wider scope of Teyvat and what happens with the world in the end in canon, but…

It could go so many different ways.

I think my favourite headcanon is that Aino will also turn out the kind of “wedded to her job” kind of autistic genius as she grows up, and they’ll just keep going as a weird family in Scrapyard forever (though they’ll probably travel the world and maybe join Linnea on her expeditions sometimes, for change of scenery). Dottore already forgets that Aino is a literal child 90% of the time, regarding her as an overall sensible colleague/family member, so in that scenario, very little would change. She just gets taller, he vaguely notices.

A far more terrifying prospect is that she’ll grow up with an interest in finding a partner eventually, in which case, I pity that poor partner. No one can give a shovel talk as convincingly as the recovering supervillain who already has multiple places around Teyvat set aside for dumping discarded/dismembered bodies. 😂

In the written parts of Scrapyardverse, he’s already becoming very protective of her, and will only get increasingly so. Also, frankly, very possessive - he has very few positive relationships with other people, and does NOT take well to feeling threatened by others encroaching. (They haven’t met yet in Scrapyardverse, but in my head, he HATED Linnea at first for having such a close relationship with and sharing a profound past with Aino. He hates Varka, too, but at least that’s mutual and goes way back.) So yeah, any prospective partner Aino brings home would have to run the gauntlet to live up to the impossible standards of the weirdest and most terrifying older brother/mentor/uncle/employee ever. Who could ever possibly believe themself good enough for HIS Aino? 😠

Hi!

I'm glad you liked the owl!

The bad news is, actual stoneware ceramics isn't really something you can do at home, at least not without investing in some pretty expensive and complicated equipment (ie a kiln that can hit up to some 1220°C).

The reason I could get into pottery is that last year I learned of a local artists' collective you could join for a membership fee and get access to studio space, tools and pros who handle the actual firing. I joined about... 3 months ago?

If you CAN find something like it, though, I very much recommend trying it! I go to the studio just about every other day, and keep experimenting my way through all sorts of different techniques and glazes. It's a lot of fun!

How difficult it is depends on what exactly you want to do and how much experience you have with crafting and art to start with.

I personally find wheel throwing very difficult, so I keep putting it off 😅 but slab-building pretty intuitive, so that's how I make most of my things at present. Sadly slab-built things tend to warp a bit more in the kiln, though, so you may get a decidedly more "hand-made" look. 😂

The top little bowl is wheel-thrown - the process helps the clay retain its round shape better. The other two are slab-built (clay rolled out into a sheet and draped to dry inside another bowl to copy its shape) and you can see the edges ended up a lot more uneven.

But I still think they're charming! 😂

The green leaf bowl and sunflower bowl are painted with underglaze watercolours and then dipped in clear glaze. The dragon bowl is just dipped in opaque white glaze. Both the green leaf bowl and dragon bowl are made with "lava" clay, white clay with particles that turn into those little black dots on the surface when fired, same as the owl.

I personally find leather-hard to almost dry clay easiest to work with - fresh clay is too soft for me, I keep smooshing it. So I just do very basic shapes while it's soft and wait for it to firm up before shaping and carving any detail.

For the owl, I used an ordinary cardboard easter egg as a mold, just rolling out clay, draping/shaping it over the egg and cutting away the excess. Once it had firmed up a bit, I sculpted the face on one of the halves, and finally added the seam on the inside to keep it in place once the halves are clicked together.

I chose to fire it closed so that it'd still fit together after any potential warping, and it worked fine!

I'm very happy with how it came out. 🥰

Fingers crossed you'll have a chance to test out ceramics, too, it really is a lot of fun! Every morning I drink my breakfast tea from a cup I made myself, and it makes me vary happy. 💚

"I think he would have liked you. The original Zandik, I mean."

How would a conversation like that even go?

Spoilers are okay for me now, we finished blasting through the AQ. I may be a mess emotionally, but… 🥲👍 So, fair warning, lots of 6.6 spoilers ahead, too:

That is actually such an interesting question because- Okay, I will need to go over all the new information in more depth once I feel capable of doing so without completely crashing again. But based just on Vibes, it seems that 35 (who we now know for sure is our Scrapyard guy, or at least Scrapyard!Dottore is half of 35) had a rather special relationship to original Zandik.

When he talks to Pantalone, he has to correct himself: “I” – that is, Zandik, created the segments.

And in the Anomalous Tree Marrow II, 35 is actually the one who asks the others if they don’t feel sorry for Zandik just after his death, when everyone else is excitedly gearing up for the autopsy/dissection. Even going so far as to say they SHOULD all feel some emotion and compassion. Which are… not aspects I’d otherwise associate with 35.

And seeing as how 35 also positions himself in a role where he clearly feels he has a right to simply erase all the others… I would guess that at least in his own mind, 35 feels he’s the one most like Zandik? Or at least the one who carries on his legacy the most? (I suspect all the others would disagree, but there’s still something there)

Incidentally also VERY suspiciously side-eyeing the order of events in Marrow III, where 35 thinks about “my segments” in a later part, set well AFTER Sumeru and the Erasure. Did he somehow make his own after erasing the others, despite the soul-splitting limitations? Or are the scenes just listed in the wrong order? (Overall, I really disliked a lot of III, I can NOT believe in a characterization that has Dottore actively disinterested in the false sky, I just can’t, but that one implication is very 👀)

SO, back to question.

Now that we know a lot more about the dysfunctional family of segments, I can see that 35 would see quite a lot of 8 in Aino? Or rather, he sees in Aino what 8 was never allowed to become. SOMETHING happened to original Zandik at age 8, the first Perspective he chose to keep, and the age at which “he lost his sense of compassion”.

I had already written a few scenes (posted AND upcoming ones) before 6.6 dropped, that have Dottore very protective of Aino - not only her physical well-being, but specifically the importance of allowing her mind to remain free and unrestricted - and I have to say that after 6.6, I feel even more justified in those.

The world's constant judgment and rejection of him has left deep, deep scars. And he does NOT want that for Aino.

“Aino is a very special child,” she told him, allowing her voice to go sharp. “Take care not to harm her. None in Nod-Krai will stand for it. I will check in soon, to help monitor her continued recovery.” He sneered viciously at that, looking genuinely offended. “You could not conceive just how special a mind like hers truly is,” he snapped. “People like you, clinging to smothering notions of convention and propriety, are a far greater threat to a spirit like hers than I could ever be.”

So yes, I do think our Scrapyard Dottore might logically think quite a lot about how the original Zandik might regard Aino. And I think he’d decide (as being the one most like him, obviously, so clearly he would know. If you ask him, at any rate) that Zandik would have liked her. Her curiosity and brilliance and somewhat flexible morals. It reminds them of themselves. What might they have become, if they had remained on the path Aino walks, and not been changed so drastically at age 8? (Maybe in studying and gently mentoring Aino, he may learn. It’s a worthwhile endeavour, surely?)

I don’t think Aino actually knows about the segments, as well as many other parts of Dottore’s past yet. She’s been told or picked up enough to be perfectly well aware that he’s a completely amoral villain with a horrendous criminal record, she’s just decided to adopt him anyway. He can probably be trained! The power of krumkaker overcomes all! But she doesn’t know a lot of the more personal details.

She’d probably be intrigued by the idea of more Zandiks, and also lament that the others aren’t around anymore – she’d have wanted to meet 8! Baby Zandik! They all sound like fun! (No, they weren’t, says 35 like a lying liar who's definitely never had a moment of regret or doubt about the Erasure)

So yeah, probably a deeply weird conversation, but then, a lot of their conversations are by default, so that’s not really out of the ordinary. I don’t think she’d be happy to learn he actually got rid of the others on purpose, though. That’s Evil™, Zandik, we’ve talked about not being actively Evil™! But okay, it was before, so not much to do about it now. Just don’t do it again, okay?

There’s still a LOT of things we got in 6.6 that I need to sit down with for a good long while and just… process. I liked a lot of it. I also really disliked a lot.

And I need to cherry-pick which parts do or don’t actually fit with what I’ve written for Scrapyardverse so far. Many things are surprisingly compatible! But many contradict too much to be reconciled, and in those cases I think I’ll simply stick to what I’ve already written for consistency… Or just go really Vague.

We’ll see!

😍

I am so glad you enjoyed their interaction! I certainly had a lot of fun writing it! And a reread? I'm so flattered you liked it enough for a second round! 🥰

There's a little more Jahoda coming up in chapter three, but sadly not with Dottore around. Since. You know.